Walt Disney was all about family, in his life and in his life’s work.
When he created award-winning animated films, it was with family entertainment in mind. And when he conceived Disneyland, the world’s first theme park, the impetus was to build a place where parents and their children could have fun together.
In fact, you can say that when it comes to those cast member connections, it’s all relative.
Here are several notable Disney cast members and their family connections over the long and storied history of the company:
IT ALL STARTED WITH THE DISNEYS
As most everyone knows, one of Walt Disney’s most famous quotes was: “It all started with a mouse.”
In reality, it – meaning the multi-billion-dollar Walt Disney Company – was started by Walt and his brother Roy O., who, in 1923, brought their fledgling animation film studio from Kansas City to Hollywood in search of fame and fortune.
Early on, the Disney Brothers Studio enjoyed modest success with a series of 12 animated shorts known as the Alice Comedies. The premise was simple: During a live-action sequence, a young girl [either by accident or during a dream] suddenly finds herself thrust into the cartoon world.
While Roy O. handled the business aspects of the studio, Walt did all the animation himself. With the success of the Alice Comedies, though, Walt and Roy O. were able to hire additional artists, most notably Ub Iwerks, who they had worked with back in Kansas City.
Among the other new hires was a young inker named Lillian Bounds. A romance sprang up between Walt and Lillian and the two were married in July of 1925.
In the years that followed, Walt and Roy experienced tremendous highs [the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the creation of Disneyland] and staggering lows [near bankruptcy and a crushing strike at the Studios].
Walt and Lillian’s daughter Diane Disney Miller would champion the construction of the Walt Disney Family Museum, and Diane’s husband, Ron Miller, became the company’s president and CEO from 1980-1984.
Meanwhile, Roy O. Disney’s son Roy E. Disney became a key figure in the rejuvenation of Walt Disney Animation In the 1990s. He also played a key role in the creation of Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park.
THE IWERKS FAMILY: THREE GENERATIONS OF EXCELLENCE
Most Disney history buffs know Ub Iwerks as the gifted animation artist who worked hand-in-hand with Walt Disney during the early, lean years of the Disney company in the 1920s.
They know Ub for his work in designing and refining the Mickey Mouse character, who made his first film appearance in 1928’s Plane Crazy. Ub also was known for his work on Disney’s Laugh-O-Gram animated shorts.
But what they may not know is that Ub left the Disney company in 1930 to strike out on his own, only to return in 1940 – not as an animator, but as an inventor who crafted some of the film industry’s most innovative inventions, be they technical, mechanical or optical.
He was named a Disney Legend posthumously in 1989.
Ub Iwerks’ son Don began his career in 1950 working in The Walt Disney Studios Process Lab. In 1966, Don was promoted to manager of the Machine Shop and worked with his father on a multitude of projects that included the building of the Xerox system for animation; the sodium vapor traveling matte process used on Mary Poppins (1964) and other films; and the special projectors and film storage systems used in the Parks.
Don retired from Disney in 1986 to co-found Iwerks Entertainment with a former Disney vice president, Stan Kinsey. In 2007, Don joined his father in being named a Disney Legend.
To commemorate his father’s career, Don wrote Walt Disney’s Ultimate Inventor: The Genius of Ub Iwerks, which chronicles his father’s many technical contributions to The Walt Disney Studios, Disneyland Resort, and Walt Disney World Resort.
Don’s daughter Leslie Iwerks has carved out her own niche as an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated director and producer. Leslie made her directorial debut with the award-winning theatrical documentary, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (1999), for Walt Disney Pictures, chronicling the life of her grandfather, Ub.
Leslie Iwerks was the guiding force behind The Imagineering Story, a six-part documentary series featured in Disney+ that takes a deep dive into the creation and history of the Walt Disney Company’s much-heralded creative wing, which is responsible for the theme parks and park attraction around the world.
THE SHERMAN BROTHERS: A SPOONFUL OF TUNEFUL
One of the many highlights at D23’s 40th anniversary celebration of Walt Disney World in 2011 was a performance by legendary Disney composer Richard Sherman, who took guests seated inside the Contemporary Resort on a magic journey through some of the most popular Disney songs he and his brother Robert had written.
Between tunes, he offered incredible insight into how each song was written, sprinkling in sometimes amusing, often poignant words to enhance his story.
One such story actually applied to several songs. There were a number of times during their association with Disney when very few people understood the concept of a project or where it was headed.
“Walt would show us a concept for something which made no sense,” Richard said, “and we’d stare at him with blank looks on our faces.
“Then Walt would say, ‘I don’t know what it’s about, either, but you’re going to write a song that will explain it.”
Several times during his between-song banter, Richard made it a point to say that he was only half of the songwriting team and gave due credit to his brother Robert, who had retired to England.
Richard took particular joy in relating two stories about Walt’s favorite song, “Feed the Birds,” from Mary Poppins.
As the story goes, on many, many mornings, Walt would walk into the Shermans’ office at the Walt Disney Studio and simply say: “Play it.”
And the Shermans would gladly oblige.
“Feed the birds … toppence a bag. Toppence. Toppence. Toppence a bag …”
Another memorable story took place on the day he performed in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland in honor of Walt Disney’s 100th birthday in 2001.
Richard sat down at a bright white piano and began to play “Feed the Birds.”
As he was nearing the end of the song, “a bird suddenly flew down from a tree and landed right on my piano. It stayed there until I finished the song, then as quickly as it flew down, it flew away.
“I’m convinced,” he said with a touch of emotion in his voice, “that that bird was Walt.”
Richard and Robert Sherman wrote more motion-picture musical song scores than any other songwriting team in film history, many of them for Disney films. They also composed songs for Disney Parks, most notably “it’s a small world” in the Magic Kingdom and a number of timeless tunes for EPCOT.
During their careers, they won two Academy Awards and three Grammy Awards.
Robert passed away in 2012, while Richard died in 2024.
VAN FRANCE AND THE ART OF CREATING HAPPINESS
Van Arsdale France was an important figure during the early days of Disneyland, when it was decided that all the new, incoming cast members needed to receive training on the “Disney way” and how to “create happiness.”
He was hired during the latter stages of Disneyland’s construction, when chaos was the order of the day. His training center consisted of two ranch houses that had been located on the property before they were transferred to a backstage area and put together to form one large building. It was painted white and became known as The White House.
France hired a young intern named Dick Nunis, who would go on to bigger and better things later in his career … president of Disneyland and president of Walt Disney World. During their initial training sessions, cast members were taught Disney history [“It all started with a mouse”}, the importance of a friendly smile, treating paying customers as guests, every guest is a V.I.P., and how to attain a clean appearance to present a “good show.”
France’s training program remains a Disney staple to this day and has been copied by companies all over the world. His philosophies have been crystalized into what is now known as Disneyland University.
France was named a Disney Legend and was honored with a window on Main Street in Disneyland.
Van’s daughter Cheri and his partner Estelle [Stel] Webb’s daughter Susan Fields both worked at Disneyland during its early days. Cheri, in fact, has vague recollections of walking along Main Street U.S.A. a few months before the park opened in 1955.
“I was 10 years old in the spring of 1955 walking down Main Street when it was just a dirt road,” Cheri recalls. “Dad said I met Walt Disney, but I honestly don’t remember. Dad was totally immersed 24/7 for the next two months in working at the park. I didn’t go to Disneyland until two or three months after opened. I was in awe, but disappointed.
“My biggest disappointment was the Peter Pan ride. During that first visit, I was taken inside the building that housed it. I saw things that looked like clamps hanging from the ceiling and I thought that’s what the ride was all about – I thought you’d get clamped into a harness and fly around like Peter Pan. When I finally got on the ride, it was nothing like I had envisioned; just riding around on a pirate ship.”
Susan Fields worked in the Sunkist snack bar, starting in 1969, when she was 17. “I worked right across from the Jungle Cruise during summers and vacations. It was fun and I loved it. We were never not busy, except for maybe during the winter.”
Susan remembers Van’s influence, even back then. “Van wanted to build morale, so he came up with the idea of canoe races.” The teams were comprised of cast members from each shop or attraction in the park.
“The canoe races were held around Tom Sawyer Island,” she said. “We [Sunkist] never won. We had too many young women on our team.” Before being hired, she went through the training program devised by Van.
“I learned that it’s so much easier to do your job with a smile on your face than to be grumpy and unpleasant,” she said.
(First in a series on Disney family connections).
Chuck Schmidt is an award-winning journalist and retired Disney cast member who has covered all things Disney since 1984 in both print and on-line. He has authored or co-authored seven books on Disney, including his On the Disney Beat and Disney’s Dream Weavers for Theme Park Press. He has written a regular blog for AllEars.Net, called Still Goofy About Disney, since 2015.
Interesting article.Thanks Chuck.
I saw Leslie Iwerks on the 2023 DVC member cruise. She gave a great presentation about her family working for Disney. Her cousin was sat on the front row and he was also an Imagineer.
A few years ago I saw a fabulous play called “A spoonful of Sherman” which was about the Sherman family. Not only did it cover the brothers, it included songs and story pertaining to their father and Robert’s son, also called Robert, who were both songwriters too, though not for Disney.